Yesterday was a bad day for Gmail users. There was an outage that impacted many Gmail users. Some people experienced downtime with Gmail, and they were unable to access their email for a period of time. Other users faced potentially bigger issues, with emails sent to them being returned to the sender as undeliverable. The Verge has more information about the outage, but here’s how domain investors were impacted.
Set Google Alert for Your Domain Keywords
I want to share a tip that might be helpful for domain investors, particularly those who have longer tail or unique keyword domain names. Use Google Alerts to monitor the usage of keywords that make up your domain names. This will not only give insight into businesses that begin using the keywords on their website, but it will also let you monitor the ongoing usage of them.
One domain name I own is WhiteEagle.com. I can set a free Google Alert for the term “White Eagle” and choose the Alert options that are most important to me (language, types of websites, region…etc). Every time a website or web page is published and archived in Google with that keyword term, I will be notified via email. I can set up alerts to be sent immediately, daily, or once per week, depending on how frequently I want to be updated about new search results. Google Alerts can be set up for a wide variety of keywords and keyword phrases related to my domain names.
How Google is Using Google TV Domain Names
Yesterday, Google announced that it was bringing back its Google TV brand. This is not really all that interesting to me, but the domain name situation was something that caught my attention. First things first, check out the one minute introductory video shared on Google’s official Twitter account:
Welcome to Google TV. The entertainment you love, with a little help from Google. 📺 Available today. pic.twitter.com/qJYSbWWUeM
— Google (@Google) September 30, 2020
GoogleMeet.com Sells for $1,950 After Google Meet Rebrand
GoogleMeet.com appears to have expired at the end of January, and the domain name made it through the deletion process. The domain name was then caught by drop catching auction platform DropCatch.com, and GoogleMeet.com was sold for $1,950 on Friday. The sale was confirmed and archived in NameBio, and it was shared on Twitter:
4-17-2020 top 10 publicly reported domain sales.
Bit of a strange day … I even saw https://t.co/J1IFWHhNDs sell for $1,950 on DropCatch.
Unless the buyer is Google, that is cyber-squatting and I don’t recommend anyone purchase infringing domains like that one. pic.twitter.com/clhsk3mbIU
— Josh.co |🌐💡| (@JoshDotCo) April 18, 2020
GoogleCoronavirus.com Subject of UDRP Filing (Update)
It looks like we have our first Coronavirus-related UDRP filing. It appears that Google has filed a UDRP against the GoogleCoronavirus.com domain name at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), according to UDRPSearch.com. It is case #1888606. Because NAF does not report the name of the complainant until the decision is published, we can only assume the complainant is Google.
Google Registers TeachFromHome.org & TeachFromHome.Google
According to my morning DomainTools Registrant Monitor alert email, Google has registered the TeachFromHome.org domain name. The domain name has a creation date of March 10, 2020 and it is registered at MarkMonitor. TeachFromHome.org had initially been registered using MarkMonitor’s privacy proxy service (DNStination Inc.), but it looks like the domain name transferred to Google LLC within the last day or so. It also looks like Google registered TeachFromHome.Google as well. I did not do an extensive search to see if other related domain names were registered in addition to these two.
At the time of publication, TeachFromHome.Google does not resolve to an active website or error page. If you visit TeachFromHome.org right now, you will see a 404 error page, so whatever Google has planned for this domain name, it is not ready to go live yet:
